Tuesday, December 31, 2013

More horrific news from the Cleveland neighborhood where Ariel Castro tortured three women for a decade: On Monday, Elias Acevedo Sr, Castro's neighbor, pleaded guilty to hundreds of charges, including two counts of murder and the rape of his three daughters and sister-in-law.
Over the course of two decades, Acevedo repeatedly raped his three daughters. In 1993, he raped his sister-in-law, who, at the time, was 18 years old and 5-months pregnant with his brother's child.

You have to credit the Japanese kleptocracy for at least being consistent.

(Reuters) - Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men.
He isn't a social worker. He's a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.
"This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day," Sasa says, as he strides past men sleeping on cardboard and clutching at their coats against the early winter cold.
It's also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.

Killing two birds with one radioactive stone.

And yet, the shame lies only with the victims of homelessness, apparently.

Some of America's biggest jerks libertarians will read this story with their biggest 'free market boners'.

Monday, December 30, 2013

At a Sportsmen’s Ministry talk in 2009, Robertson had some advice for a young man.
“Make sure that she can cook a meal, you need to eat some meals that she cooks, check that out,” he said. “Make sure she carries her Bible. That’ll save you a lot of trouble down the road. And if she picks your ducks, now, that’s a woman.”
“They got to where they’re getting hard to find,” Robertson remarked. “Mainly because these boys are waiting until they get to be about 20 years old before they marry ‘em. Look, you wait until they get to be 20 years old, the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket.”
The Duck Commander company founder added: “You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16, they’ll pick your ducks.

A new U.S. intelligence estimate predicts that gains the United States and allies have made in the Afghanistan war in the past three years will be significantly rolled back by 2017, even if some U.S. troops remain, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing officials familiar with the report.

And the people that will shriek loudest are the people who unleashed the original bad and "perpetual war" plan to begin with. It's been a GOP favorite since Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese government fell in the 1940s [had to get over the stigma of ignoring the Nazis by claiming everyone else were the appeasers].

The only real consistency of American foreign policy in the post-WWII era is the ability to always eventually make the same mistake the same way.

We're either staying in Afghanistan forever, or finding a new version of Afghanistan.

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

How dare the original version of events, turn out to be the actual original version of events?

You mean the nutjobs of America actually facilitated the extremists of Libya?

Monday, December 23, 2013

Last month, Senator James Imhofe's son died in a plane crash. Obviously, that is a personal family tragedy. But in discussing this, Inhofe had a rather disconcerting statement to make...I know he makes disconcerting statements all the time...but this was rather revealing.

"I probably shouldn't say this, but I seem to have gotten more, at least as many, maybe more, of communications from some of my Democrat friends. And I'm a pretty partisan Republican," Inhofe said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "They realize that you've lost someone, and that brings us closer together."
...
"

Something like this happens, and all of a sudden the old barriers that were there, the old differences, those things that keep us apart just disappear," he said. "Those defined positions, they don't change. But your attitude changes. And I can't help but think when I'm confronting someone on something on which we disagree, that I know how they responded to my loss."

Again, sorry for your loss...but did you really think people on the other side really were that much of a cartoon portrait that you believed them incapable of expressing actual humanity?
That.is.pathetic.
But no more so than the actual policy positions of James Inhofe.

Organizations that actively block efforts to address climate change are funded by a large network of conservative donors to the tune of nearly $1 billion a year, according to the first in-depth study into the dark money that fuels the denial effort.

Friday, December 20, 2013

One of the reasons Republicans want to pass voter frauds laws (well after the joy they get at keeping minorities from having any power) is that they think everyone else is the filthy moral assholes they are.

Liz Cheney's Senate campaign in Wyoming continues to be dogged with news about her family.

Politico reported Wednesday
that Cheney's husband was registered to vote in both Virginia and
Wyoming despite signing a document in the latter state saying he was not
registered elsewhere.

The OC Weekly on Thursday published a report
on the "horrific pigsty" that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) left behind
in a Costa Mesa, Calif. home he lived in from 2010 to 2012. And there
are photographs.

According to the newspaper, Rohrabacher moved
into the four-bedroom, four-bathroom, 6,300-square-foot home on April
Fool's Day 2010. Rent was $3,350 a month. The carpets were new, and the
backyard featured "thriving" flowers, plants, and grass. But when
homeowner Robert Polyniak's longtime girlfriend, Darlene Whitsell,
entered the home shortly after the Rohrabachers left the property,
things looked different.

"It was disgusting," Whitsell told the OC Weekly. "It was unbelievable. Who lives like that?"Among
the damage: the carpeting was covered in "massive black stains and
muck;" appliances were damaged and rusted; the plants outside had dried
up and died; there were holes in the walls; every toilet seat in the
house was broken; light switches and doors had been cracked; an
overflowing tub cracked a ceiling with water damage; phone lines were
"strangely severed;" and more.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Jack Kingston, a representative of Georgia, paid $170,000 annually to engage in the part-time job of legislating and the full-time job of fund-raising for Jack Kingston knows from moochers.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) wants kids to learn early in life that there's no such thing as a free lunch. To make sure they absorb that lesson, he's proposing that low-income children do some manual labor in exchange for their subsidized meals.

But you cannot have a new 'Gilded Age' if you don't offset kickin' the poor with some sweet gild.

Kingston co-sponsored a $6.3 million earmark in 2008 to replenish the
beach on Tybee Island, where he owns a cottage about 900 feet from the
beach. "It's absurd to suggest that this benefits me," he said.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced his delegates to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. And, in what may be a thumb in the eye to Russian President Vladimir Putin over his crackdown on gay rights, two of Obama's delegates are openly gay.

George Zimmerman has a new hobby. He's auctioning his first hand painted artwork on eBay. The oil painting drew a bidding frenzy as soon as it was posted Monday on the auctioning site. As of Tuesday morning, there were 98 bids, with the leading bid standing at $99,966. In the description, Zimmerman says painting has been a way to express himself, his emotions, and the symbols that represent his experiences

I'd like to sell a painting I made expressing my opinion of George Zimmerman and his horrible enablers.
But the late Mr. Cash long ago beat me to it.

If Mohammed Ibrahim Caravan smells fear about Afghanistan's future, he doesn't show it. He strolls around like a country squire in the glittering new gated community he helped build, dressed in a spotless white shalwar kameez tunic, stylish shades and polished wingtips.
Advertisement
"Worried?" the 28-year-old asked. "Hah — not me. I'm confident in the future. If you don't invest in your own country, who will?"
Caravan's company is plunging $160 million into the family-run Saleem Caravan City, with its rows of salmon-colored villas with balconies and rose gardens, like some ersatz Miami Beach condo community. He's moved his family into a lavish 7,500-square-foot mansion with a pool, hot tub and guest kitchen.

Yes, surely, at the end of the day (or decade-plus) what it all comes down to is the kind of place Thomas Friedman can relax and pontificate about what the riff-raff outside the gate will be up to in another six-months.
Nice to see that billions in debt, thousands of deaths, and a decade of bullshit have led to an American-sponsored salute to America's one percent.
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Thirty-six people, nearly half of them children, were killed on Sunday when Syrian army helicopters dropped improvised "barrel bombs" on the disputed northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Obviously, this is a horrible thing for any nation to have done and the Syrian government will be quickly condemned by any number of American political leaders.
Meanwhile, at about the same time this week.

Anger over the American drone campaign against militants in Yemen swelled Friday with word that most of those killed in a strike a day earlier were civilians in a wedding party.

If there's one thing American politicians love more than condemning other countries, it's hypocrisy.
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

“They need better ideas, not ‘Mad Men’ style sensitivity training,” said
Representative Nita Lowey of New York. Lowey, who serves as the top
Democrat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, thinks that
Republicans’ problem is anti-women policies, not their inability to talk
with the opposite sex. “Believe it or not, Paul Ryan is a good friend,” she said. “He calls me Mom. I call him Naughty Boy.”

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., sent out a release Wednesday morning announcing that his chief of staff, Ryan Loskarn, is being put on leave over allegations involving child pornography. "I am stunned, surprised and disappointed by what I have learned," the senator said in a statement.
Loskarn, 35, was arrested in the afternoon by the Postal Inspection Service "based on probable cause for possession and distribution of child pornography charges," said Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr.

And it's hardened heart is, as usual, about as small as Rupert Murdoch's conscience.

The New York Times ran a five-part series on the struggles of a very, very poor family struggling to survive in New York City in a subpar (to say the least) government-provided living space.The Post's reaction?

Yes, the family’s housing has problems, including mice and reports of sexual assaults and other crimes. But...

And you know how it is going to go from there.

At least Murdoch's rag isn't giving out lumps of coal this year...no, they'll go with the floggings instead.

Federal officials on Monday unsealed five criminal cases filed against 18 current and former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, as part of an FBI investigation into allegations of civil rights abuses and corruption in the nation's largest jail system.

Lovely, anything else to make it extra disturbing?

Among those charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the 18-page indictment are two lieutenants, one of whom oversaw the department's safe jails program and another who investigated allegations of local crimes committed by sheriff's personnel, two sergeants and three deputies.

It's the kind of thing that would happen when people are taught to not give a damn what happens to people...who are not them.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday he opposes extending unemployment benefits for workers, arguing that it would be a "disservice" to jobless individuals.

Yep...apparently not being able to afford to eat or pay rent is just another character-building exercise for the child born wealthy enough to love libertarianism...it's like he was named after somebody.
But there is no malicious policy that the GOP cannot seem to browbeat into a Democrat.

A senior Democrat said on Sunday he hoped an emerging deal on the US budget would include an extension of unemployment benefits but added that his party would not necessarily walk away from an agreement that left it out.
"I don't think we've reached that point where we've said, 'This is it, take it or leave it,'" Senator Richard Durbin told ABC's This Week

Merry Christmas to the unemployed with a hearty "fuck you" from both parties.
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]

Friday, December 06, 2013

Perhaps the best contemporary argument against "drones" is that imagine if the Apartheid government of South Africa had them in the late 1950s when Nelson Mandela was in hiding and deemed a leader of a terrorist group, the ANC. You think they'd not have used them to try to take him out?

This is not to defend many of the targets at present (though it certainly is to defend the collateral damage of innocent victims).

All those dead not as special innocent civilians that we are killing is supposed to stop Al Qaeda from killing the "extra" innocent civilians that are not being droned!

SANAA, Yemen — More than 50 people were killed in a deadly attack in the Yemeni capital Thursday when militants penetrated the headquarters of the nation’s Ministry of Defense in a two-stage assault that began shortly after the start of the workday.

Despite our best efforts at collateral damage, there has not been enough collateral damage. Clearly we are going to be droning some more!

It's 2013 and one of America's political parties actually feels the need to offer this...

The National Republican Congressional Committee is offering tutorials to staffers of men up for election next year on how not to offend women. Politico reports the sessions are meant specifically to assist Republican men in how to speak on the campaign trail when they are up against Democratic women.

‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’ ”
- Unnamed Bush Administration Aide to Ron Suskind 2002.

And in that "Reality" we created in Iraq, a decade plus after "Shock and Awe" and Commander Codpieces being flown to an aircraft carrier to proclaim "Mission Accomplished"...

A spate of execution-style killings in Iraq has rekindled memories of attacks carried out at the height of the country's sectarian bloodshed and raised fears of a widespread return to such violence.
In the past week Iraqi police have found the bodies of at least 41 men who were either shot in the head or decapitated in a wave of killings in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

Of course, maybe they were just trying to give Iraq the kind of reality America has all too often?

NBC Chicago pointed out that, as of Sunday, 12 people had been murdered in Chicago this year, which, at a rate of two a day, but the city on a pace for a devastating 730 homicides, higher than any one-year murder total in Chicago since 1997.

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

And to think, Karen Handel, the right-winger who brought down the Susan B. Koman Foundation, was only involved in spirit.

The Guardian has learned that the American Legislative Exchange
Council (Alec), which shapes and promotes legislation at state level
across the US, has identified more than 40 lapsed corporate members it
wants to attract back into the fold under a scheme referred to in its
documents as the "Prodigal Son Project".

Adrian Laroze Briskey, 28, was charged with murder for allegedly
fatally shooting Michelle Shepherd, 36, in a Hoover, Ala. parking lot.
According to the victim's sister, Briskey was incensed that Shepherd was
taking Alabama's loss in stride.

...

"She said we weren't real Alabama fans because it didn't bother us that
they lost. And then she started shooting," the victim's sister, Nekesa
Shepherd, told the Associated Press.

Florida State fans were very happy with their team's 37-7 drubbing of
Florida over the weekend. But none of them were feeling as emotionally
charged as 37-year-old Brant Brown, who according to police celebrated
his team's victory by threatening a bar full of Florida fans with a
machete.

What kind of southerner was Mr. Brown, you don't bring a knife to a Gun-State?

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department hired dozens of officers even though background investigators found they had committed serious misconduct on or off duty, sheriff's files show...

Ultimately, about 280 county officers were given jobs, including applicants who had accidentally fired their weapons, had sex at work and solicited prostitutes, the records show.

For nearly 100 hires, investigators discovered evidence of dishonesty, such as making untrue statements or falsifying police records. At least 15 were caught cheating on the department's own polygraph exams.

Twenty-nine of those given jobs had previously had been fired or pressured to resign from other law enforcement agencies over concerns about misconduct or workplace performance problems. Nearly 200 had been rejected from other agencies because of past misdeeds, failed entrance exams or other issues.

While speaking with David Gregory on Meet The Press this weekend, a top Catholic official (Cardinal Dolan) claimed that the church is ‘out-marketed‘ by supporters of marriage equality.

Yeah, I suppose when on one side you have people wishing for a legal sanction to a loving committed relationship, just like everyone else, while the other side has been busy paying off child abuse claims you can call that bad marketing. Among other things.
But you know, you might also point out that statements like this are not helpful.

After lobbying against New York’s marriage equality law, Dolan prohibited by decree any Church personnel or property from being utilized for same-sex marriage ceremonies under penalty of “canonical sanctions,” calling the state’s law “irreconcilable with the nature and the definition of marriage as established by Divine law.” He has also compared the “threat” posed to marriage by gays and lesbians to that of polygamy, adultery, forced marriage, communist dictatorships, and incest.

Yeah, hard to believe that kind of statement could be out-marketed.
[cross-posted at Firedoglake]